Lets See here.

I havnt written in a while. We are done for the year with camps. I'm glad. Starting the first we get into our meetings and things start rolling. I'm really excited.

Camp was fun. We had 7 teams form across Illinois here. Some were really good. Edwardsville was the best. They had a Defensive lineman that will be a bigtime college player in two years. Michael Young. MArk my words. He was fun to coach. Camp was fun. We drilled them and had individual with the positions once a day. Not two bad, except the D line group was f ing huge. I had two sections of 60+ kids. Tim Wilkins, a Wesleyan Defensive End helped me. That was it. Kind of tough to get real personable drills, but I managed.

I cant wait to get our kids here. I'm really excited. I'll have 4 expereinced Defensive ends back and 6 interior guys. The rest will be Frosh. I'll end up with a group of about 16-18 players. Thats like back in Napoleon.

Speaking of Napoleon. I'm in constant contact with John Snoad. He is getting ready for a fine season. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this team will be the fastest team in Napoleon History. Speed kills, and hopefully we kill some opponents. A win over Defiance, our arch rival will be three in a row and 4/5. Realisticly we should have won in 2003. We just didnt get it done. Such a great game. I wish it was week 10.

Findlay and MArion will be the favorites again in the GBC. But I'm telling you...Don't count out the former fighting Scotts!

JJHuddle hasnt had much on the cats yet. I'm reading.

I spoke to Angi V this week. I got kind of a random email from her. Which is really strange cause I was thinking about her after running AIM . Angi is the former girlfriend that I compare everygirl I date to. I just really like her. But she is now married, and out of my league. Out of my league because I'm not a home wrecker. That is a reference to one of my friends who used to have a thing for married women. Anyway , Things are looking good for her carear wise and school wise. Best of luck, and keep writing. I enjoy it.

A lot of girls I used to date are married now, but I guess it is about that time. I'm not looking to get marreid anytime soon. First there is noone that I'm serious about. Though there are some definate possibilities here in Bloomington. Coach Eash predicts that Jared and I will both be in serious relationships befroe we leave. It will take someone that can live with a football coach cause that is my passion. I will not pull a Thompson and disapear from coaching. Even though he got a great girl in Lisa.

Graig Bachman now has a blog. Thanks to me.

I've been watching World Series of Pop Culture. It is addicting. Though they repeat everything and my tivo doesnt understand i dont want repeats.

Fantasy Football along with some other things are going to get put on the back burner. I'm in two leagues. Or was. The Bowling ally League, which is a keeper league that I dominate and Joe Good's League which is the Premere league of 90's Graduates. It is about as famous as the Gubernath Leaugue that everyone knows. I wont be able to draft, and that is the best part. So, will see. I'd really like to still do Joes.

I'm going to email him now.

I havnt heard form the crew in a while. Javan, Sicky, Tim...Where are you guys?

Enough Rambling...it is 11:00 already.

NCAA 2007 for 360 is awesome. Minus the one button old school techmo bowl like select a player. That is the sucky part. I can live with everything else. I wish EA would get it together and package a real deal whole game for once. this is watered down and missing things. But the Defensive pick a player is awful. But the Game play is awesome.

Jared and I played on Saterday all day on the big screen at the Shirk.

Ok, I said i was leaving.

You should check out http://www.privatephone.com/

Its like free love in the 60's. I've never paid for love. Although they make it look glamorous on Entourage! Free voicemail number and service. Kind of nice.

Entourage is probably the best shoe that most people aren't watching. In fact, I'm going to attempt to name the best shoes right now.

10.
9.
8.
7. Nip Tuck
6. Survivor Where Ever the hell they are
5. Lost
4. Entourage
3. Rescue Me
2. Soprano's
1. Grey's Anatomy

Well I couldn't quite get 10. But I must say that the West Wing is one of my alltime favorite shows. It recently ended a long run. This season was very enjoyable.

Look how many of those shows are on either HBO or FX. I think shows are much more real there. Of Course they don't give a shit if they offend anyone either.

I just got back from Coach Eash's House. He had the staff over for a cook out. It was nice. I've met everyone now but two guys who couldn't be there. It was nice, low key, just coaches and those who had wives.

I ate two burgers. Jared ate 4. I thought it was hilarious. He is not a big guy either.

Things get going big time here soon. Conference call tomorrow to all the players. We start meeting a week before August. Our last Camp of the summer starts Sunday.


I'm looking up Nascar results to mail out. After that, probably bed sometime early.

Back to Bloomington

Find a station, in the early morning rain...

I traveled back to Bloomington today. I found a good radio station. It was all country. I think it was a Purdue station; it came in clear from Indy to almost Bloomington.

I love the song Summertime by Kenny Chesney. Sure all the girls love Kenny, but he performs great. Whether or not he writes his own music, I'm to lazy to look, he is an awesome performer. The song choices paint a vivid picture and I just get it. The song summertime is a classic. Listen to it, I'm looking to download it, but I might give allofmp3.com some pennies.

I'll probably not make it home again until after football season. I'll be back in Ohio a few times, once for the Bengals camp and again to play St. Joes.

The drive here was pretty normal. Actually I made it in under 5 hours this time. Normally 5 hours 10 minutes or so. I kept my cruise on about 10 mph over the whole way.

I'd like to bitch about truck drivers who feel the need to pull out in front of you to pass another truck. I don't have a problem with the truck swap...Its only when they pull out right in front of you.

Another truck baffling question....Indianapolis would be much better driving if trucks were pinned to the outside lane. Instead they are driving in all but the far left, and they just create picks and screens. It gets so annoying. Not as annoying as the lady who comes barreling up behind you, and when you pull over to the other lane she takes forever to clear you. Shit, and those people who are oblivious to the two lane thing...The ones that refuse to move at all. The interstate is more dangerous when you go slow. I really believe that.

Besides the couple inroad tirades to the air passenger it was a good trip.

Bachman: www.blogger.com get yourself a blog. It is free. Then let me know you have one.

Actually if there are people out there reading this, let me know I might open it up to allow comments. Of course that could get brutal.

Well, I'm back to football after some ISU stuff tomorrow morning. Going to learn me the MAC video editing software. Should suck with the one click thing. That's what I hate most about MACs. I hate the mouse and the no right click feature.

I hate Taylor Hicks. Possibility confirmed, America got it wrong.

Going to give Tim a call, maybe he is in Vegas.

Goodnight America....Wherever you are.

July 1, 2006

When I left Bloomington, I made it a point to remember my black dress shoes and belt for Joe and Trisha’s wedding. But I forgot my dress pants and shirts. So I needed to get some.

I went to the dentist in the morning; Dr. John Burns made a special trip in for me. No cavities! I need to floss more.

Then I went to the Men’s Warehouse and got some new clothes. My parents and I ate at Ground Round, which is like Applebee’s or that type or restaurant. It was good.

Got back, and went to the wedding reception. It was 6:30 or so when I got there, I figure I’d be major late, but I beat the wedding party. I sat with Brian and Rachel Bostelman, Chad Bostelman and his girlfriend, Nick Sonnenbeg, Nick Dammon, and Christy Frutchey.

I saw Mike Hummer which was pretty neat. He was curious how things were going for me. I filled him in, and I had questions about his vacation in the hurricane and football.

I talked with Ryan Miller and Cara. I have only seen them a few times since getting Riffed at Napoleon. They seemed excited about there August Wedding. I’m going to miss a lot of weddings here in the short future, not because I want to, but because of my new job. Miller, Nemire, and Sicky’s wedding are all during football season and I really don’t see anyway that I’ll be able to go to any of them. But, time will tell.

The wedding was a lot of fun. I didn’t get to carried away drinking, cause I had t drive my ass home. But I had a good time. I talked with a lot of people I haven’t seen in a while. Doug Brown, and yes he was sweating. Hines, Vanny, and Brian Wade. Wade and I had a good conversation. His daughter is 4 now, I am getting fucking old.

I found out that Bachman is probably my only reader of this Blog. I told him he needed a blog if for no other reason to discuss his music interests. He has pretty good taste in music, and most people from his class do not.

There were a lot of younger people at the wedding, people from my first couple years of teaching and coaching. Not really a big deal, but I’m not really friends with these people, because of my professional past. Though it was good to say hello and see how school and stuff is going. Zach Kruse is truly a Kruse and reminds me a lot of Todd. Enough said.

Went up to Rick’s afterward hoping to catch up with Sicky, Jen, and Javan. No Dice. But Kruse, Lininger, and Nemire were there. It was good to hang out a while.

Came home about 2:30 or so. I dropped Chad Williams off on the way. When I got home, I thought maybe Christy Brinkly or Uma Thurman might be in bed waiting for me, but again….No Dice


I’m home until Thursday morning, then back to Bloomington Normal.

June 30, 2006

I got up fairly early, 7:00am. I wasn’t packed. I took me a lot longer to get around than I thought. I think after loading up and eating a quick breakfast I was on the road by 8:30. I got home about 2:30 our time. 5 hours plus and hour in there from Central to Eastern Time Zone. I went to the bank, and to the post office, and made it home. Good to see the family. It was also good to see my dogs.

I took a nap, unplanned, but woke up later and my sister had people over. So I shot the shit with some of them.

June 27 – 29,

After 10 days of camp I took the day off. I slept in and did nothing. I just was a bum all day the first day back.
Then I went to the Shirk, there wasn’t much to do. So I would go in at noon or later. I got back into a lifting routine, and I have been playing a lot of basketball. I’m really bad at shooting, I always have my elbow everyway but under the ball.

I watched some tape, and took some notes. I’m looking forward to coming home this weekend.

June 22 – 26, 2006

Thursday was our travel day. We traveled from Bloomington to Grand Rapids, Michigan. We met at Coach Eash’s house. It was the first time I had been there.

Brian Steiner and Mike Goodwin came with us.

On the way there there were two drivers, since Steiner was coming. I rode with Coach Eash. He listens to terrible music, or rather stuff I don’t care for. So I high jacked the radio with my ipod. We listened to some good stuff. He liked most of it, told me to get rid of the “Acid Rock” a couple of times. 5 hours went pretty fast. That’s pretty good for being the first long trip spent with the boss.

Grand Valley is a beautiful campus. It is very large. It is spread out too. 25,000 or so probably go there. It used to be a large commuter school, but that is changing. The football facilities were awesome. There only going to get better too. They are going to build an indoor facility in the next year. Pretty amazing for a D2 school, but they have one 3 National titles and played in 4 games during the last 5 years. That is impressive no matter what level.

The dorm we stayed in was very nice. It was a quad, with a community living room and kitchen. I really liked it. I would like one for my apartment.

Registration was sort of a nightmare. My master spreadsheet was corrupted, so the data printed out all wrong. People who had paid owed and vice versa. Thank fully coach Brockelbank of GVSU had a backup. Otherwise, we would have been in deep shit.

Camp went well. I had a stay group, which means my guys didn’t practice both Defense and offense. This is great for a couple of reasons. One, you get a lot more one on one time for teaching and drilling. The second, I only had 13 evaluations to do instead of 26 or so.

My group was older, but there was not many who had a lot of game time experience. I think they did well. I really like my group. A couple of kids really stood out and were great leaders. A couple others stood out too, but for other reasons. During registration, one kid wrote so bad I took his card from him and wrote myself, of course I got this guy. He was big and strong, but soft and didn’t seem bright. Turns out the guys was pretty smart, just had some problems mentally. I felt kind of bad.

As far as games were concerned, we struggled. The kids couldn’t remember there plays, and that hurt us. We scored a little more often, but again didn’t earn a W.

Coach Alexander gave me shit, and a lot of it. But I think he liked me. I think he like all of we Wesleyan coaches. He invited us to go to training camp in Cincinnati for the Bengal later in July.

Michigan camp was run a lot loser than Illinois. It was that way probably because it wasn’t on our campus. A lot of the coaches were former players or cronies of Coach Al’s. You could tell Coach Eash was a little upset at times about the looseness of camp.

Grand Valley had good food, but not near as good as Wesleyans. I enjoyed a real cappuccino every night for supper. They also had great pizza.

The Coaches party was a lot of fun, we played Euchre. Coach Al and his daughter won. He put up a $100 prize, but Steiner and I fell short.

I met so many coaches over the last two camps, I’ll bet 30 something. I started a database, for future use. I really like Coach Tom Riva and Jeff Hancock. Riva is with the arena football, Grand Rapids Rampage, and Hancock just left GVSU for the OC job at Adrian.

The coaches were all a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.

Steiner went back to Ohio. He is coaching at Dayton. So Goodwin rode with Coach Eash and I back to Bloomington. We drove through Chicago on the way home. Traffic was pretty bad because of construction. I will avoid it at all costs until it is done. But I think, I could cut off another hour or something if I could drive 80/90 all the way to Interstate 55.

June 18 - 21, 2006

Camp at Illinois started on Sunday. It is the Midwest Elite Lineman camp. We probably had just shy of 200 high school players there.

We started off with a staff meeting. I met a lot of coaches. Coach Paul Alexander, who is the Bengals Offensive line coach, is the co-chair of the camp with coach Eash. He brought with him three players; Andrew Whitworth, Nate Livings, and Jesse Boone. Whit was a 2nd round pick out of LSU. He is a freak of a person, absolutely enormous.
Livings and Whit were from LSU, and Boone from Utah. Livings and Boone were free agent pickups that were not drafted, but Paul thinks they will all make the team, especially giving the circumstance that they will have two free agent all star lineman at the end of the season.

I talked to Livings the most at registration; he seemed really interested in knowing about high school football and coaching.

I got to know some of the other local coaches pretty well. Coach Chris Patton, DL, from ISU, and some local HS guys, Rich Baldwin and Duane Thoennes. I talked about the 3-5 and the differences between Ohio and Illinois HS football. There were a lot of other guys as well, Coach Murray and Brian Steiner were the other D line guys.

I met the guys that Jared and I replaced. I knew Jeff Voreis, but Didn’t think I knew the other guys, Matt Traxler and Brian Steiner. I spoke to Steiner before I accepted the job at IWU. He is a good guy and I picked his Brain a lot during camp. It turns out that I had actually met Traxler before. He used to live with Rickenberg. They played together at Tiffin.

We did three practices a day for camp. We had meetings and all that. Players were divided up into groups. My group was very rough. They were all young. I think the oldest was a sophomore. Most were Freshman or Junior High. I got pretty frustrated at times. We played a continuing game, sort of lineman only football against the other groups, I went winless and took a lot of crap. But everyone realized that my group was young and inexperienced. We took pride on not quitting and scoring a few times.

Halfway through the camp we switched groups. I got guys who wanted to play both O and D, that were with an Offensive coach the first half of camp. This group was much more enjoyable to coach and a lot easier too. They were mostly upperclassman.

Coach Alexander told me that he would have quit if he had had my group. I’m not sure if he said this to get my to feel better or if he was serious, but I did feel better.

Camp was great. I ate well on the dining hall food. I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the guys that I replaced. We went to Mulligans one night. They had mason jars that were filled with long islands. Tasty! Long Islands are probably my favorite mixed drink. I love them.

The last night we had our coaches party at Scooners, the place reminded me of Wriglyville. It had a grat outdoor patio and had decent wings. We had a good time.

When camp ended, I helped clean stuff up and load stuff up for our next camp at Grand Valley State.

June 17, 2006

I entered more data for the camp. I printed off rosters etc. for camp.

Put on the pads for the sleds and got final stuff ready for camp. Short day as far as work is concerned.

I went to the grocery as well. I seem to go to Meier a lot. They have the cheapest Milk. I also go to Aldi, for the little stuff.

June 16, 2006

Coach Eash and I went to Sam’s Club, an extension to Wal-Mart. We picked up a lot of things for camp. We bought more Gatorade to sell at the store as well as some candy bars.

I got pads out and boards too.

I haven’t written on here in a while so I’m trying to remember as I type this.